Blackened Armour
by Carmabaeji - Lively Aria
Summary: He may not be her knight in shining armour, he may not save the day, but he's the guy that loves her, so he does deserve a minute. A much deserved fic for Tony who I've neglected too often, 7am to 8 am.


Blackened Armour  
  
by Aria  
  
Rating: Same as the show.  
  
Spoilers: Up to 8am  
  
Summary: Nina re-evaluates a few things, as she falls to her death.  
  
Feedback Policy: Email me or post a review of my story on fanfic.net, I want as much as possible!  
  
Archive Policy: Anywhere you like - just keep my name attached and tell me where!  
  
Authors note: Up until 7am I thought Tony was a complete twat, and all of a sudden at 7am he turned into a nice guy! I wanted to write a fiction where Nina realised he wasn't a twat too (she probably already knows, but you know....)  
  
07:33:14  
  
Our jobs would have been made easier had the boxes been labeled, but to be honest, it didn't affect us that much. Each plastic drawer on the storage wall contained one type of item, so it made my searching easier, and soon I'd found the circuit board with enough memory on for my purposes, and enough optical and digital cable. Toby had taken some wire cutters, and was busy slicing open the wires of the CTU internal surveillance system. Tony had turned the computers on in the ITS room, but he had only connected them up to the corridors around it, I needed to see more rooms, the more secluded ones probably, storage, bathrooms. I pulled a tangled mass of wire out of a drawer, and dragged it over to Toby. Here, I gave him the handful, and he began to cut lengths of about a yard each.  
  
I fixed the wire to the bared cable as he passed it to me and set about with a small screwdriver on securing it into a multi plug so I could hook it up to the computer.  
  
We were working in silence, and I was still forming words in my head. I don't know how to say what I've suddenly discovered, but I know I need to. If I don't talk to him now, after the arguments we've had today, I'll loose him. I fixed the actual plug portion onto the plug and pushed it into the first com port on the back of the computer. Tony walked round the computer screen and began moving the mouse, setting up the program so the computer would flick through these cameras as part of its normal sequence, and I moved to look at the television screen.  
  
This particular tv was tuned to a morning news programme, probably one designed to pull in younger, non-politically minded people, and I flicked over quickly as the presenter stressed for the third time in the last five minutes that Palmer was the potentially the first black presidential nominee. A more indepth news programme, this one bulleting his favourite issues over his opponents, came on, and I chose to stick with that one, folding my arms and tucking the remote control into my body with them.  
  
Behind me the computer sprung into life, there were a few seconds of nasal sounds, those that computers make when installing new hardware, and then the sound of a program starting up. The television screen flicked over to live feed of Palmer and I scanned the image, trying to find Jack.  
  
Tony moved near me, and I felt his hands in my hair for a moment, and then he passed a long piece of straw around in front of my face. I unfolded my arms and took the straw from him, turning it for a second, I must have gotten it in my hair when I landed on the ground. A few seconds later he passed me another, and another, and then a dried leaf. He slid his hands around my waist and I leant back against him, relishing his warm heat, the fading smell of his after shave, languidly shutting my eyes at the comforting sensation of human contact, that was until he whispered in my ear "You going to tell me about that?"  
  
I was silent for a minute, having finally decided that I was going to tell him about the last hour, I wasn't sure about the actual phrasing and I had to pause. I'd just re-evaluated the last few months of 'screwing' Tony into something more, and I wasn't sure how to tell him my revelation without telling him how I'd felt about him before, which I was sure would hurt his feelings.  
  
Tony eventually got angry at my pause and extracted himself from out embrace, moving to the computer screen, he paused there with his hand hovering over the keyboard, before he eventually pulled up the camera of the main floor, zooming in on Jamey.  
  
I dropped my collection of dried grasses on the counter top and put my hand on top of his over the mouse, rubbing it gently, watching his face, until he relaxed enough so I could interlock my fingers with his. He sighed contentedly, and took his hand off of the mouse, gripping mine. "Nina, you leave for a half hour, and then I get a call where you want me to let people think that you're dead, and..."  
  
"Tony.." I shushed him, walking round the stool to wrap my arms around his torso, I lifted my chin onto his shoulder and he sighed into my hair, which was probably in a complete state, if Tony's gifts were of any indication.  
  
"I mean it, Nina," he pushed me away, just enough so he could look at my face. "Screw regulations, I want to know what happened." He wasn't exactly the most patient of men, but after the last few hours his patience was wearing thin. I knew how he felt, or how he would feel if he found out that I'd been considering he may have been a traitor, or if he'd known that that was only part of the reason I'd hid it from him.  
  
I glanced away for a moment, it was taking me huge amounts time to form a few simple sentences at the moment, it didn't help that the subject was difficult already. Tony dragged himself away and headed to the door. "I'm going to keep an eye on Jamey." He tossed back at me.  
  
"Tony." I caught him just as the door buzzed, he didn't turn back and began to push the door open. "Tony." I called his name again, he eventually turned back to me, the urge to find out what happened to me overruling his anger, and he shut the door again, allowing it to click before he rested against it.  
  
I swallowed, he was giving me a smoldering look, that despite the circumstances made me blush. I turned my attention to the counter top, and collected the dried leaf between my fingers to examine. "Jack." I glanced back up at him with a smile and returned to the leaf. "...took me hostage in his office, had me drive to a... to the middle of nowhere and shot me."  
  
Tony ran a hand across his chin. "The bastard." he growled, rushing over to me, cupping my face, running his fingers over my neck, down my back, rubbing, gently feeling for any irregularity in my skin, "where?" he asked, his hands making their way up my front.  
  
I drew in a sharp intake of air as his hands prodded what must have been a bruise on my rib cage, Tony noticed, and gave me an angry protective look, an evil look even so, gripping my shirt and began to pull it to see the bruise. I held his wrists and kept his hands down, "Tony, I'm fine." he looked dubious for a minute, "I'm fine." I reiterated, and eventually he let go of my shirt, regarding me with wary eyes.  
  
I blinked, suddenly worried that he would presume that that was what I was so afraid of telling him. "Tony, when Jack and I walked out of here, and he fed you that line about district..." Tony nodded, "what did you think?" I asked.  
  
Tony opened his mouth and shut it quickly. He kept it shut and didn't say anything, which only made me feel worse. That he imagined the worst.  
  
"I was worried that you thought we were going off together." Tony swallowed, and refused to look at me, I gripped his shirt sleeve, sliding my fingers under his suit jacket, I needed a response from him before I put myself on the line with this. I needed a response from him. "That you thought I was still sleeping with him."  
  
He finally looked at me, only to illustrate the anger in his words, "Why would that bother you? It never has before."  
  
He had every right to be annoyed at me. "Yeah, and that was a mistake." That caught his attention. "I honestly thought that Jack and I..." My revelation was still too fresh to say out loud without a deep breath, so I took one, "When he shot me, and when we were arguing, I was just thinking...oh god...I was just thinking about you. I was worried that you were thinking I had run off with Jack, when..."  
  
"Hey, hey." Tony didn't need me to ramble on any longer, he wrapped me up in his arms and kissed my temples, just as I threatened to dissolve into tears, it felt so girlish and I hated the fact that he was seeing me like this. Tony didn't mind, resting his lips on my forehead, and holding me even tighter as my eyes dampened.  
  
"I was an idiot." I pulled away and wiped my eyes, moving back towards the computer. "I'm sorry."  
  
Tony shook his head, "Why did he do it?" he asked again.  
  
Tony had already asked me a similar question earlier, something which he'd obviously overlooked in his anger, resentment, possibly even disbelief if Tony had even believed Jack was upstanding. "They've got his wife and daughter, if anything happened to them he'd feel..."  
  
"Like I'd feel if I lost you." He cut me off, his voice heavy, deep, and I snapped to look at him. I was just realising how important he was to me, and having trouble vocalising it. I had no idea he felt anything like that. He looked up at me, and we held each others gaze for a long minute. "I'd better get back out there." He mumbled, and turned.  
  
I reached out and grabbed his keycard which was in his hand, and he let go of it, letting it drop to the floor as he pulled me into his body again, and cupped my chin with both hands. I watched his mouth as he stroked my hair, and then shut my eyes as he kissed me.  
  
It was relaxed, first affirming I was there, and then enjoying the sensation. It wasn't intentionally passionate, but everything always was with Tony. His hands trailed down my back and then under my arms where he rested his thumbs on my rib cage just below my bra. He carefully avoided the area where I'd winced before, which didn't go unnoticed. He kissed the corner of my mouth and then my cheek as he pulled away.  
  
"I didn't realise." I muttered as his lips made contact with my cheek.  
  
"I know." He whispered into my skin, some of his breath tickling my ear, some my neck, I shut my eyes as he let my head drop back to his chest, and reveled in the spicy smell of after shave that was strong enough to smell in the hollow of his neck.  
  
I mentally relived the last few seconds in my head committing the details to memory. Tony's hand on mine, the way he reached for me, pulling me to him, the cards dropping to the floor, the barrel of a gun in my back... "Omigod!"  
  
He knew this wasn't about him and pulled back just in time, to allow my head to snap up with out getting head-butted. "What?"  
  
"The key card!" I exclaimed, "It's on the floor to Jack's office!"  
  
Tony squinted at me for a moment. "We'd better have Milo work it up."  
  
"And you can ask him in front of Jamey to see what she does." I prompted. Tony nodded, smiling at me mischievously.  
  
"We can watch her using the surveillance system, and if she wanders off to do anything we can collect her to question her." Tony filled in the blanks.  
  
I smiled at him and raised my eyebrows suggestively. I'd already found some memory chips that could be wired into the system when I had been considering ways to allow me to move freely about headquarters. "Okay, Tony, how much memory do these have?" Tony was more technically minded than me. I circled the desk and passed him one of the circuit boards from the yellow shelf I'd taken off the wall.  
  
He looked at it for a second and tapped each chip in turn, presumably counting them. "They will give probably thirty, thirty-five seconds of loop from a single camera."  
  
"How much time can you guarantee?" I asked him, not wanting to run out of time and have whoever Jamey was working for find out that we were onto her.  
  
"Twenty-five, but that ties in well, the cameras are on a twenty second loop, and the only possible input time is when the standard feed switches over." Tony explained.  
  
I already knew this, but Tony liked to explain things, "Okay." I commented, as I moved back over to the shelves, I reached into the containers and looked for radio headsets, I knew I'd seen some earlier. I rummaged through three drawers before I felt Tony's arms around me again. I kept searching, but leant into the warmth. He pulled the collar of my shirt down and placed a kiss on the base of my neck. I turned my head just enough to smile at him and continued looking for the headsets, he would have helped me if he'd known what I was looking for.  
  
I eventually found the drawer with the headsets in, all be it encumbered by Tony, and pulled out a pair, he took them from me and let me turn in his grasp. When I had done, he reached for my shirt again, gathering it in one hand and raising it to just below the satin of my bra. There was a raised circular red mark that I'd winced at earlier on. He ran his second hand lightly across the surface of it, but it didn't hurt this time. He put my shirt down, and smoothed it over the edge of my skirt. "You've got a change of clothes your car haven't you?" he asked me.  
  
"Yeah." I mumbled, as I took the headsets back, making my way back over to the computer.  
  
"I'll get them for you later." He offered, as I took the two headsets and began to set the frequencies. "We all set here?"  
  
I nodded at him. "I'd better go." We looked at each other for a moment, both trying to remember what the other had forgotten, and eventually he swiped his keycard, which he must have picked up earlier, and the door buzzed open.  
  
07:40:19 


End file.
